Starfront Observatories

Mentioned on a related discussion ~2 months ago:

Remote hosting for your telescope

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44741078 (151 points, 44 comments)

I thought this was service where I could rent out a high powered telescope for a few hours, but rather you send in your own telescope. Still a nifty idea for those who love astronomy.

ok so why not download a high res photo off the web? There is probably a photo for every single astronomy thing you want to photograph?

For be it for me to knock what seems to be a successful idea but at a certain point, putting so many telescopes into the same place starts to seem a bit odd in that many of them are presumably pointing at the same things at the same time. This given the fact that there are 110 Messier objects and perhaps a dozen other things (planets mostly) that would be of much interest to astrophotographers.

Might be more efficient to get a large group to go in on bigger telescopes 'til you have enough of them that no matter what single thing you want to photograph, there'll be something pointed that way that's bigger than what you could afford on your own. Astrophotography isn't really about that of course but at a certain point this doesn't seem too different than reprocessing data from an observatory.

I get the appeal. Those are pictures are stunning, and probably better than I could take myself, but they aren't my picture. I can see wanting to take one of my own, even if someone else has already done it.

Don't forget about NCG and IC objects. The NGC (New General Catalog) contains a total of 7,840 unique objects.

The IC (Index Catalogue) contains 5,386 celestial objects, making it a substantial addition to the NGC.

Funny I should see this on the front page, since I’m one of the (likely) few lunatics on HN who rents a pier at Starfront. So far I can say that they’re definitely one of the better offerings when it comes to remote observatories. Shipping my gear and setting it up was a tad painful, but once everything is operational the rest is a breeze. Plus the onsite staff are very responsive when it comes to servicing my CDK (cleaning/upgrades/resets/etc.)

For those who want to try telescope colocation on a budget, they also have a relatively cheap ZWO Seestar pier option. I haven’t given _that_ a try yet, but I’ve heard good things about it on Cloudynights.

It's like ham radio: you can buy fully certified working receivers - or build one yourself. Latter one has huge learning curve and gives you full control over the process, the first one not.